Stonerot

We are Slaved of the Riverbound, and so even more stone than they. We are to be culled and carved away to make way for the flow which our overlords assure us is necessary for live to carry forth.

I could see in the guards eyes and with the way he held his crop that he toyed with riding me. There was a gossamer thread between enforcing compliance and wanton thrill, and the guard had yet to decide if there would be his own punishment or glory in mounting me — if my transgressions warranted it, or were it to premature and hasty to act yet. Overly-eager guards were subject to the same punishments as the slaved. Our overlords wanted their workforce compliant, but largely intact and able to work, after all.

Kallis also saw those eyes and crop handling ways. He nudged me, hard, with a shoulder to mine to bring me out of my daydream and reverie. The harness kept me aloft, but I stumbled in the muck and loam left behind in the wake of cutting and it took a few strides before I caught rhythm and drove once again.

The guard, seeing his moment passed, turned his eyes back to a broader grey gaze. They lingered overlong as they passed to make sure inattention had not returned, but any visions of glory would have to wait for another day; one where Kallis was less likely to nudge me back to submission.

“Mind on task, stonerot. I don’t care to take splash damage because you drift in dream,” he said to me. He still thought that the punishments we slaved endured were avoidable things, something pone could elect to avoid by behaving as ordered. He had yet to live through one of the Red Nights and would learn soon enough that he would be paid in the same currency as the rest of of the slaved. Soon enough. Soon enough.

It was rising on mealtime, I could return to my dreams for the scant hour they took throughout the carve to feed us and cut waste. There was no punishment for drifting during that time. In fact, it was encouraged. But most of the slaved did not, or could not, go on drift. Those that could not just slept.

Me, though? I longed to return to the hilltop she stood, her lips promising her kiss if I could only but find her hill and call it forth from the understoning of dream and into reality.

That I was so close is why I dared to drift when cutting.

Kallis had already turned to sleep after gulping his nutrients, hanging slack beside me. I shifted in harness so that I could pillow my head to his traps and went on drift to dream.